I've already picked my Thanksgiving turkey!

Daniel was out of school Friday, so I drove down to Salt Lake with the kids on Thursday afternoon to spend the night at Grandma's and go to the zoo on Friday. We went with Grandma and our cousin Caitlin.

It was a little drizzly in the morning, but it cleared up about 10 minutes into our visit. This big stone ball on a water pedestal really captured the kids' attention. I eventually pried them off (I actually had to grab Daniel by the jacket collar) to keep them from soaking themselves during the first moments of our visit. We saw gorillas and giraffes ("joy-raffes" if you're asking Leah) among bears, meerkats and rhinos.

It was amusing (and at the same time, it wasn't) that my kids were trying to measure up to a gorilla.

At the end of our gazing and admiring, we stopped at the zoo's "Beast"ro for lunch. All the kids had corn dogs. (By the way, at $2 a corn dog, you'd think they would be something a kid could actually bite into. These were half rubber!) I am used to seagulls in Utah. Utahns with pioneer heritage even have a special love for these noisy scavengers. There were signs on the tables asking diners not to feed the seagulls. (Kind of like kids and candy...one piece is NOT ok.) So I was a little surprised to see a turkey come strutting through the tables and chairs, followed by a few other gobbler gang members.

Daniel couldn't resist throwing them a french fry (no loss there, either...what did they fry those things in anyway?) WELL! Seagulls and turkeys have much in common when it comes to scavenging! Before we knew it, a late-in-life fowl had picked Nathan's nearly-new corn dog right from the table! Grandma stomped off after it. Nathan's corn dog got stripped down to the skinny and he had a hot dog on a stick. Now there was a lot of yelling coming from the table as little people tried to protect their lunches.

I had Rebekah on my lap while she munched on the stolen crown of her cousin's corn dog. Without warning an ill-mannered turkey plucked it from her hand and started shaking it violently to break it up (remember, these corn dog are half rubber). Now my mother-bear instincts kick in and I kicked that turkey right under his tail feathers! Have you ever heard the distress call of a turkey? In that moment, I chose and marked my turkey for Thanksgiving this year. I half-wished some zoo keepers would come out to yell at me so I could yell at them for having scavengers with such expensive tastes roaming free around the dining area, attacking small children!

So, I guess you could say I goosed a turkey. I put it in my list of "Things to do before I die" and then checked if off!

We also took the opportunity to visit Grandpa Peterson at his house Thursday afternoon. We were very glad to get out of our seats after 216 miles of traveling to play with Grandpa and his toys. Thank you for the fun and the ice cream, Grandpa! We love you!

(Speaking of turkeys and geese, get a gander of that striped one on the right!)